The Truman Administration and Bolivia: Making the World Safe for Liberal Constitutional Oligarchy. Glenn J.Dorn. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2011.

Abstract

The Truman Administration and Bolivia: Making the World Safe for Liberal Constitutional Oligarchy. Glenn J. Dorn. University Park: Penn State University Press, 2011.Bolivia is frequently compared to a beggar on a golden chair, an impoverished state possessing tremendous mineral resources. The silver mines of Potosi' once drew the Spanish to the heart of South America, but by the mid-twentieth century its tin resources were of far greater interest to the US, which was the world's largest consumer of this metal for cans, solders and alloys. Tin is central to Glenn Dorn's analysis of the relationship between the US and Bolivia during the sexenio, the six-year period between the lynching of military strongman Villarroel and the National Revolution of 1952, a seminal event that still reverberates through Bolivian politics.The book is structured as a series of chapters detailing the interactions between the Truman Administration and a rapid succession of Bolivian governments, all of which attempted to steer a middle course between reform and violent repression to protect the oligarchic order. Dependence on tin, which Augusto Ce'spedes named El Metal del Diablo, had stunted the growth of the economy as well as the civil society in this landlocked state. As long as the proverbial Bolivian beggar relied on his tin cup for foreign exchange, the fate of the nation lay in the hands of a small landowning elite, the rosea, dominated by the tin barons Aramayo, Hochschild and Patino. This feudal social structure, along with the humiliating defeat in the Chaco war, made fertile ground for opposition movements such as Paz Estenssoro's Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario, and for a rich crop of workers' associations and secret military lodges. The sexenio was the last stand of the rosea, but the attempt to stem the revolution would be futile without the support of the norteamericanos.The Truman Administration stepped clumsily into the seething cauldron of Bolivian politics. Its ability to understand the country was impaired by overblown fears of fascism, Peronism and communism, but also by the fact that the Americans kept a tin ear to the ground. Despite its ideological affinity for trade, the Truman Administration engineered a tin buyers' cartel with the British to supplant the producers' cartel of the interwar years. The US, represented by the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), thereby circumscribed the Bolivian government's ability to mollify the mining camps with decreed bonuses and pay hikes. While speculating that a liberal constitutional oligarchy should have been near ideal as an ally and provider of tin, Dorn shows how Washington failed to develop a coherent policy, leaving the RFC to push the tin prices down regardless of the consequences. …